


Motivations

by JenNova



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-06
Updated: 2012-07-06
Packaged: 2017-11-09 06:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenNova/pseuds/JenNova
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John never wears gloves. Finch bought John an apartment full of windows. And why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Motivations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Loz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loz/gifts).



> I love this show, it's great! The one sticking point from the start has been that John, super badass black ops dude, never uses gloves and leaves fingerprints everywhere. Then Finch bought the super badass justifiably paranoid black ops dude an apartment full of windows.
> 
> Herein I try to figure out why. Spoiler warnings run up to 1x23. Gifted to Loz because she's the one who was so insistent that I'd love John Reese.

“May I ask you something, Mr Reese?” Finch's voice is soft in John's ear as he breaks into the apparently abandoned apartment.

The lock eases under the ministrations of his lockpicks and John makes a final check of the hall before pushing the door open and sliding through.

“Little busy right now,” John says, cleaving to the wall and holding his gun level with his chest. He pushes the door shut with a foot, the click of the lock going back into place startlingly loud in the silence. He closes his eyes while they adjust to the low light and exercises his hearing; low buzzing of old wiring in the walls, a TV in the next apartment along, a sudden spark of laughter from above, nothing else.

“Come now,” Finch says as John opens his eyes again, seeking the dark shapes of any obstacles outlined by the light filtering under the door. “You and I both know very well that the apartment has been abandoned for some time.”

“Always pays to be careful,” John says, clearing the first doorway on his left; a bathroom, cracked mirror, toilet seat up, faint smell of vomit and urine, molding shower curtains. Empty.

Finch's reply is a quiet snort of amusement. It makes John's mouth quirk up. He steps around a low table and clears the second doorway, this time on his right; closet, rusting rail, damp cardboard boxes, a coat that smells of blood. Empty.

“Go on then,” John says as he rounds the corner sharply, sweeping his eyes across the living area. “Ask me.”

This room is brighter, the windows at just the right height to let in the maximum amount of streetlight possible, and John can see the ruined furniture. The smell of damp and mold is more powerful here, probably rising from the sagging couch. He sweeps the room again; kitchen behind him, door to what is probably the bedroom in front of him to his right, a starburst of damp around the ceiling light suggests the upstairs neighbours have poor water pressure, coffee table propped up by phone books, an armchair on the verge of collapse. Empty.

“Understand I only ask this out of curiosity,” Finch says and John crosses the room on soft feet, sliding along the wall again towards the bedroom door. “And no judgement of your methods is implied.”

“ _Finch_ ,” John says, darting across the door and leaning his left shoulder against the wall on the other side. He rests a hand on the door's handle.

“Would it not attract less attention,” Finch begins, as John turns the handle and swings the door open. “If you wore gloves on your more clandestine efforts, and didn't leave your fingerprints behind you?”

John pauses just inside the doorway, surveying the room; the collapsed bedframe without a mattress, the leaning chest of drawers, the bedside table with broken lamp, a wardrobe with one door hanging open. Empty. He reholsters his gun and gives Finch's question some thought as takes a flashlight out of his pocket and aims it at the bedside table.

He hadn't had access to gloves when he was on the street. The only pairs he'd seen on his compatriots under bridges and in abandoned buildings were fingerless. Pointless in disguising your fingerprints. Of course, gloves couldn't always be guaranteed as a disguise. People in his former line of work knew to look for smudges and smears as much prints.

There's a battered book on the table, a much dog-eared copy of _The Spy Who Loved Me_ , and John slides it into the pocket of his jacket without thinking about his motivations for doing so. He crosses to the wardrobe and pulls the other door open, exposing some moth-eaten shirts to the air.

“Mr Reese? Are you still there?” Finch asks, his voice hesitant. For a man who pries into other people's lives almost constantly he's always curiously cautious about John. John wonders what Finch has on him, what stories he's pulled from his special forces jacket.

“Still here,” John says, pulling the drawers out one by one. “I haven't really thought about it.”

It's a lie, mostly, John hasn't _thought_ about why he doesn't use gloves until this moment. He _knows_ why he doesn't, however, but he isn't certain he wants to share the reason. It would probably seem strange to Finch – or else make Finch give him one of those looks that seems to suggest Finch would empathise with him if he knew how.

Not that Finch is incapable of empathy, he wouldn't be doing what he was if he wasn't, but when it comes to John he's seems to believe that there's no point at which their professional lives would overlap enough for him to understand. Not true. There's enough pain in Finch's past, the past that John is only just digging into, to understand at least a little of John's motivations.

Not this one perhaps.

“You were right,” John says, changing the topic smoothly. “This was a dead end. No-one's been here for a least six months.”

“Well,” Finch says as John makes his way back through the apartment. “Always pays to be careful.”

John grins as he shuts the apartment door behind him, rapping his fingers against the book in his pocket. He'll leave it in Finch's library next time he's on site, tuck it somewhere that Finch won't find it immediately, something to remember him by if Carter gets close enough to catch him.

–

Months later Finch gives John a key to an apartment. It's bigger than any living space John has even contemplated owning. He doesn't know what to do with it at first, the space. He's not used to it. He normally prefers close walls, tight quarters, something the military left behind in him.

The things he owns can all fit in one box and one duffel so moving in is more an exercise in hoping no-one notices the bag full of weapons he has slung over one shoulder than anything else. He still prefers riding the subway when not in the middle of an op, rubbing shoulders with ordinary people living ordinary lives. The day he moves he feels more like them than normal. Considering normal generally reads for not feeling like them at all he chalks it up as a win for Finch's quiet attempts to re-socialise him.

Finch probably doesn't realise he's doing it, which amuses John more than anything else about their relationship. Finch, a self-confessed and deliberate social outcast, subtly guiding John back to the human race. The man he was six months ago would've resented it. Now he just shrugs it off and if it occasionally works? He's not complaining. Not when it generally draws out the quiet smile he doesn't often see on Finch's face.

It's extravagant, the apartment, but in his past explorations of the neighbourhood John had found several of his favourite things; shawarma, a second-hand book store cluttered with out of print stock, a diner that makes perfect burgers, a bar where no-one speaks to each other. He wonders if he ever mentioned that to Finch, or if Finch really had just followed him one day

The only problem is the windows. Wide, beautiful windows. Windows any New Yorker would kill for. It's the killing that's the problem. Wide, beautiful windows are perfect for snipers. John's made use of a few in his time. He feels exposed whenever he walks past them. They make his palms itch. He almost contemplates covering them with newspaper and tape, shutting the world out, but he figures Finch wouldn't approve.

John's pretending to be a civilised man, now, so he does the civilised thing and has heavy black-out curtains made to span the expanses of glass. It's not the perfect solution but it's the best he can come up with without spurning Finch's gift. He doesn't want to hurt Finch's feelings, after all.

He buys some weights, nothing fancy, and sets about regaining the form he'd lost while he'd been lost to himself. The work for Finch has kept him fit, healthy, but he's never felt safe enough to go into a gym, to do anything beyond running a different route every day, and he's not as strong as he should be. It's while setting them up that he notices the familiarly battered copy of _The Spy Who Loved Me_ sitting in the middle of the coffee table.

He smiles and traces the edges of the book, flicks it open to see evidence of fresh dog-earing. He sets it back where it was and retrieves his earbud from the kitchen counter, tucking it into his ear and calling Finch. It's been a couple of days, he misses the dry voice in his ear.

“Good afternoon, Mr Reese,” Finch says, his voice sounding cheerful. “I don't have a number for you if that's why -”

“Thank you,” John says, leaning back against the counter. He folds his arms across his chest then unfolds them, tucks his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants.

“I – you're welcome,” Finch says, a hint of relief in his voice. “You approve?”

“I do,” John says, feeling his mouth twitch up. He really does. “Only – the windows. They -”

“Yes,” Finch says, a small sigh escaping him. “I was unsure of them – but it was too nice an apartment to miss the opportunity.”

John likes the way Finch makes it seem like he wouldn't have paid a previous owner to move out just so that he could buy the apartment for John. Secrets in secrets in secrets and all for the sake of themselves.

“I bought curtains,” John says, shrugging even though Finch can't see him. Finch huffs out a breath.

“That's doesn't surprise me,” Finch says. He goes quiet for a moment and John imagines him becoming engrossed in something on his computer screen, forgetting he's connected to someone.

“Can I ask you a question,” John says, pushing away from the counter and crossing to the windows, looking down on the park.

“I can't guarantee I'll be able to answer,” Finch says, his tone distracted.

“What made you choose the apartment?” John asks, knowing he's pushing slightly, bumping up against their joint pretences of not spying on each other.

Finch is silent long enough for John to feel the urge to check his phone, maybe he's walked into a signal blackspot. He can't imagine any place Finch chose would have that problem, though, and even if it did Finch would have ways to fix it so it didn't.

“It was _for_ the windows, actually,” Finch says, finally. John raises his brow at the honesty. “I thought – you spend so much time watching the world with intent, John, that maybe you'd like to be able to watch it at your leisure.”

John's a little stunned by the answer and it takes him a long time to remember that he's the one who made the call, the one who should probably say goodbye first.

“Is that all right?” Finch asks as John opens his mouth to speak. John closes his mouth again and thinks for a moment.

“Yeah,” he says, looking out the window at the people practising tai chi after lunch. “That's all right.”

“I'll leave you to your day then,” Finch says, his voice growing distant as if moving away from his phone. “I know where you are if I need you.”

“You do,” John says, ending the call before Finch does. He takes a deep, shuddering breath against the knowledge that Finch _does_ know where he is. Presses his forehead against the glass as his body tenses, his flight response going into overdrive now that he can no longer pretend no-one in the world knows where he lives. He fights it, curling his hands into the curtains on either side of the window.

It's Finch, after all. If John can't trust Finch he can't trust anyone. He doesn't – he never wants to have no-one to trust again. He takes another breath and goes back to the weights, mindless repetitions driving the worries out of his brain.

–

When John retrieves Finch from Root he doesn't even think before taking Finch back to his apartment. He still hasn't found Finch's home so it's really the only option available to him but he has the feeling that even if he did know where Finch lives he wouldn't have taken him there. The deep protective streak that drove him until he found Finch wouldn't have allowed it.

The streak in itself was surprising enough, that he realises as he drives a sleeping Finch to his apartment that it actually extends to Fusco and Carter frightens him for a moment. _Mine_ hums at the core of him and he knows that he'd go to dangerous lengths to find any of them, to keep them safe.

He hasn't felt this way since – since Jessica. Or before, even, when black ops beat out his sense of empathy until not even the barest ember lay behind.

Finch is shaken, when John sits him on the edge of the uncomfortable couch John never uses. He's vibrating with a useless energy, switching between talking too much and talking too little, and John knows the edges of shock when he sees it. He was never good at talking people through it, through what they were feeling, so he puts a glass of water in front of them and places an awkward arm around Finch's shoulders.

Finch's shaking worsens for long minutes, and he bends himself stiffly into John's side, burying his face as best as he can against John's shirt. John lets him, soothes a hand over his bicep over and over again, makes vague noises when Finch babbles an unintelligible sentence here and there. John breaks a personal code and brushes his lips, barely, against the crown of Finch's head, turning his head to press his cheek against Finch's hair.

After what seems like an hour but isn't Finch rights himself slowly, one hand pressing carelessly on John's thigh as he attempts to stretch his back. His face is stained red in some places and John knows that if he looks down he'll see wet patches on his shirt. He lets Finch maintain dignity by not looking, averting his eyes as Finch restructures himself. When he looks up again Finch has retrieved his glasses from a pocket and is looking at them forlornly, one arm cracked and dangling from the frames.

John takes them wordlessly and gets up, Finch's hand falling away from his leg as he does so, crossing the room to the kitchen drawer he keeps ordinary things in. Ordinary things for an ordinary person. Like tape. He pulls a strip off and loops it around the glasses, repairing them as best he can. He carries them back and hands them off to Finch like precious cargo and crosses to one of the windows, peering out at the street. He hears Finch take the glass from the table, listens to the sound of a dry throat working to swallow.

It triggers a sense memory that makes him close his eyes, the sound too similar to a throat desperately working for air.

“Wetwork,” he says when he's satisfied the street is clear of anything unusual. He hears the glass clink against the table.

“I'm sorry,” Finch's voice is hoarse. “I'm not sure -”

“I wore gloves when we did wetwork,” John says, curling his fingers up to his palms then unfurling them again. He hears Finch stand but doesn't turn. “Wetwork is -”

“I know what wetwork is, John,” Finch's voice is closer, stronger.

“It wasn't just about not leaving traces behind,” John says, thinking of a hundred targets, a hundred dead lives. “It was practical. Kept fluids off your hands.”

“So now -” Finch's hand ghosts over his back, lands on his shoulder.

“Now I don't wear them,” John says, turning and looking down at Finch. Finch's face is expressionless in the low lighting. “Because they mean any death – any life I take is premeditated. I'm not that man any more.”

“No, you're not,” Finch says, his thumb resting just above John's collarbone. “And I won't ask you to be him again.”

John hadn't realised he'd been carrying the weight of it until suddenly it was gone – the persistent worry that Finch would turn out to be like ever other person who gave him orders, would treat him as a weapon to prime and point. The fear that one day Finch would pull the trigger.

“You understand,” Finch says, squeezing his shoulder. “I won't.”

“I know,” John says, and he does, can feel it in the strength of Finch's hand on his shoulder. He cups Finch's cheek and Finch leans into the touch, his eyes staying fixed to John's. John licks his lips and Finch's eyes flick down, briefly. John feels himself smile.

He leans down and catches Finch's mouth with his, a chaste press of lips. A puff of air from Finch's nose falls against his cheek and Finch's grip tightens on his shoulder. John puts his free hand on Finch's waist and pulls him close, sliding his legs apart to lower himself, ease the angle on Finch's neck. Finch makes a grateful noise and licks against the seam of John's lips, sighing slightly when John parts them easily, eagerly.

They kiss for long moments, burning on a low heat, until John pulls back, smoothing his fingers down Finch's cheek. Finch looks up at him, a rare mix of heady emotion displayed in his eyes, and John smiles.

“You should get some rest, Mr Finch,” John says, stepping back. “We can continue in the morning.”

“I think,” Finch says, and now John can register the slight tremors of exhaustion rippling through his frame. “I think you may be right, Mr Reese.”

“I -” John starts but Finch stops him with a hand pressed to his mouth.

“If you're going to make a pretence towards chivalry and suggest you sleep on the couch,” Finch says, humour sparking at the corner of his eyes. “I'm going to respectfully stop you there. Stay with me, I want you to.”

John lets out a breath and rolls his eyes, causing Finch's humour to melt out of his eyes and into his mouth. Finch lowers his hand and captures one of John's hands, twisting their fingers together before tugging him towards the bed.

John wants to put his arms about Finch and draw him in tight, but he knows that's almost impossible with the awkward nature of Finch's injuries. Instead he presses himself up against Finch's side and slings an arm across his chest, touches his lips to Finch's shoulder in a brief kiss. He never knew how tactile he wanted to be until his life denied him touch. Finch's hand strokes up his back, briefly tracing over scars, before sliding into John's hair, making circling motions with his fingers.

“I want to learn the story behind each scar,” Finch says quietly, against John's hairline. “I haven't been able to stop thinking about them since you were shot.”

“In the morning,” John says, his consciousness already drifting.

“In the morning, yes,” Finch says, fingers stilling for the moment. “And then every day after. Goodnight Mr Reese.”

John's breath falters for a moment at the simplest declaration of affection he's ever heard, his heart skipping in his chest.

“Goodnight, Mr Finch,” he says, whispers. _Every day after_. He can work with that.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Motivations by JenNova](https://archiveofourown.org/works/985148) by [fire_juggler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fire_juggler/pseuds/fire_juggler)




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